A Life in Secrets

Description:

Vera Atkins (1908–2000) was the highest-ranking female official in the French section of a WWII British intelligence unit that aided the resistance. Atkins sent 400 agents into France, including 39 women she'd personally recruited and supervised. Many were caught by the Gestapo and subsequently disappeared and presumed dead. In 1945, after the war, Atkins, fiercely loyal to the memory of her missing agents, took it upon herself to spend a year interviewing concentration camp officials and survivors in order to piece together her agents' fates. Helm, a founding member of London's Independent, brilliantly reconstructs Atkins's harrowing detective work, shedding light in particular on the fate of missing agent Noor Inayat Khan, whose suitability for the job had been widely doubted. Helm's portrait of Atkins is acute, dwelling evocatively on her Romanian-Jewish origins and their social significance for Atkins within upper-crust British circles, and on Atkins's mysterious personal life. Drawing on interviews with relatives and friends of both Atkins and her agents, and on full access to Atkins's private papers, Helm has produced a memorable portrait of a woman who knowingly sent other women to their deaths and a searing history of female courage and suffering during WWII.

subjects: Biography,  Great Britain,  Great Britain. Special Operations Executive,  Intelligence officers,  Missing in action,  Secret service,  Underground movements,  Women intelligence officers,  World War, 1939-1945,  World War (1939-1945) fast (OCoLC)fst01180924,  War Underground movements,  Great britain, special operations executive,  World war, 1939-1945, underground movements, france,  Intelligence service, great britain,  World war, 1939-1945, secret service, great britain,  Officières de renseignements,  Biographies,  Guerre mondiale, 1939-1945,  Mouvements de résistance,  Officiers de renseignements

People: Vera Atkins (1908-2000)

Places: France,  Great Britain